


Innermost and Underlying

by quigonejinn



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 09:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genderslide-ish-but-not-really version of Captain America.   Stephanie steps into the injection chamber, and Steve Rogers goes to war against Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innermost and Underlying

**Author's Note:**

> Incorporates comics canon for Bucky Barnes and has a reference to the Avengers movie, but does not deal with the movie beyond that or incorporate Whedon's didn't-make-it-into-the-movie bit about Cap and Peggy hanging out in the modern day.
> 
> See notes at the end regarding discussion of gender issues and whether Stephanie is intended to be read as trans.

"Remember when I made you ride the cyclone at Coney Island?" 

"Yeah, and I threw up."

...

Captain America was previously otherwise. Even Erskine is a little surprised by how truly, truly transformative the process is. 

After the process and before the power failure, he notes at least twenty-nine finer variations aside from the large, obvious ones. Steve's hair is light brown before; it goes subtly blond afterwards. The jaw grows clear and firm; the face widens. The nose is finally in proportion to the rest of the face, and the eyes become clear, striking blue. Is Steve stronger? Clearly so, by quantifiable measures. The voice has changed, deepening substantially. Are there other changes? 

"We did it," Erskine says to Colonel Phillips, in the hushed, enormously loud silence afterwards. In this version of the story, government officials do not come down from the viewing booth to congratulate everyone involved and make jokes about people in Berlin being nervous. They are nervous themselves. They stay in the booth, frozen in their seats; technicians run about in a half-state of frenzy. Phillips does not make a joke about whether the Senator likes Brooklyn now. Howard seems dazed. 

"The serum takes the innermost qualities of the heart and gives them voice. It works from the underlying desires and values," Erskine says. "This is exactly what was supposed to happen."

Phillips is too furious to even pretend. He grips Erskine by the elbow and pulls the scientist towards him. "If we put the other one, Hodges, what are we going to get?"

"We can put him in and see, but you saw the psychological profiles. We began with the stronger candidate. "

"We put the other in there, what are we going to get? A -- "

A Hydra agent detonates a bomb, opens fire, destroys all of the remaining serum except for the one vial he takes. Steve leaps to go after him, but realizes that Erskine is dying on the floor. Peggy opens fire and gives pursuit. 

...

The nurse at the recruiting station comes in to murmur in the doctor's ear about the undersized kid from Brooklyn having special clearance from upstairs. 

Peggy still sits in the car and listens to a quiet, calm voice talk about how in the last few years, dancing didn't seem to be that important anymore.

Abraham Erskine touches Steve Rogers on the chest, right above where the heart feels like it should be. 

This is story of becoming Steve Rogers and Captain America. 

...

James Buchanan Barnes rescues his friend in an alleyway. He has deployment papers in his left hand, and his brand new, clean, freshly-pressed uniform on his shoulders. 

"Why don't you pick on somebody your own size?" he says and pulls off the man, who promptly swings for Bucky, but isn't very good, is still off-balance. Even with the new uniform and the deployment papers and newspaper, Bucky manages a solid blow to the guy's face with his right hand, watches the guy get up, then kicks him in the rear down the alley with his new shoes for good measure. 

Bucky comes back down the alley. 

"Sometimes, I think you like getting punched." 

There is some short, harsh breathing and a lot of leaning against a concrete wall that smells like piss and last week's garbage. 

"I had him on the ropes," Stephanie replies. She is still doubled over, trying to figure out whether she has lost any teeth. The face that she turns up to look at Bucky is narrow, pale. 

The story of Captain America is the story of Captain America. 

...

To be explicit: a skinny girl from Brooklyn goes into the chamber and becomes Captain America. Expected? No. Intended?

Beforehand, Peggy sits in the car and listens to a quiet, calm girl talk about how dancing doesn't seem important anymore. Peggy looks over and studies the girl: The uniform doesn't fit very well on the girl. There is room in the chest and the hips where she doesn't need room; there isn't room at the wrists and knees where she does need room. The uniform hasn't been tailored, either; it's the first time that she has work a woman's uniform since joining. Peggy got it straight from the commissary half an hour before they got into the car and left it, folded, on the locker room bench for while Stephanie showered, alone for the first time in weeks. 

The short hair, cut like a man's above the ears, doesn't work either. Stephanie sits, neat and straight, hands on her knees like a man. She is tall, though, so she has to fold her legs up a little more than Peggy. In the course of the ride, the skirt has hitched up; the slip shows a little. 

The car is crossing the bridge to Brooklyn, and she looks over at Peggy. 

"You can keep on calling me Rogers, like it says on the folder," she says.

"Do you want me to?" Peggy says. 

...

"I had him on the ropes," Stephanie says to Bucky. This is patently untrue. 

The two of them are in the alley. She is still doubled over, trying to figure out whether she has lost any teeth. Are her lungs working properly? Maybe. Probably not. She knows she is wheezing and gasping, and it feels like there are giant rubber bands all up and down her chest. Her stomach is is definitely not happy, either. Bucky sighs audibly. 

"What happened this time? How did Paramus work out?" 

"They had everyone sitting in the medical exam room, shirts off. I didn't make it past the door."

Bucky doesn't say anything about them not letting girls into the army, though he could, or anything about the long list of reasons why he thinks Stephanie should try to become a nurse instead of enlist directly even though it's _illegal_ first and crazy second, why she wouldn't make it past even basic training unless she planned on spending the rest of her deployment showering in a corner and pissing hip-deep in a bush, why she could get a guy, if she wanted to. He looks at her, though, wearing the raincoat, the wrinkled collared shirt, the cheap brown suit with matching tie. The pants. She cut her hair short, too. Bucky's first reaction was to yell at her about it, and when that didn't work, he made fun of her, telling she looked like she just came out of a fever ward, but that didn't work either. Now, standing in the alley, watching Stephanie fight for breath, he doesn't say anything. 

Stephanie straightens up part of the way by leaning back against the wall and keeping her arms rigid out in front of her, braced on her thighs. At least she doesn't have a bad nosebleed. By now, it's mostly stopped. She tries to blink the tears of pain out from her eyes, and Bucky keeps standing there, and it takes her a moment to register what Bucky is wearing. 

"You get your orders?" 

...

"Remember when I made you ride the cyclone at Coney Island?" 

"Yeah, and I threw up."

"This isn't payback, is it?" 

...

The alley is quiet, and Stephanie studies him for another moment, then lets out a breath. She looks at a patch of ground to the left of her right foot. "I should be going."

A bruise is starting to form on her cheek. 

"Come on," Bucky says, and he touches her under the chin, gets her to look up. 

"Why didn't you tell him you were a girl?" Bucky says.

She doesn't say anything, so he says, "Look, it's my last night," Bucky says. "Put on your best dress. I'll pick you up, and we'll go out." 

Stephanie swallows, gingerly. She can taste blood in her mouth. "I cut my hair. And I got -- " She gestures at the cut on her cheek, the blooming bruise that is on its way. 

"Prettiest dress, Steph, and wear a hat. If the bruise gets worse, I'll get you some meat to put on it. You can use some of the makeup you still have from your mom."

Stephanie gingerly touches her nose and sees her fingers come away bloody. Not too much, though. Bucky still has his arm around her shoulders; he looks over, sees Stephanie wearing the old ugly suit and trying to find a handkerchief to wipe her fingers off on. He brushes some of the alley dirt off the collar. Thinks about what an odd duck his best friend is. 

"Don't worry," he says. "Where we're going, nobody'll notice." 

"Where are we going?" Stephanie asks. 

Bucky shows her the newspaper. "The future." 

...

"Steph, do you remember when you tried to convince the Burgess boys that women should be allowed to -- "

...

"Steph, do you remember when you got it into your head that you wanted to get in between Michael Feeney and Fred Lane when they were trying to kick the shit out of that ki -- "

...

"Do you want to kill Nazis?"

"Is this a test?"

...

"The needle will go right through him. Her."

Erskine looks over at Phillips.

...

"Do you want to kill Nazis?"

Stephanie starts and looks over. It's a small man wearing a white coat like a doctor or a scientist. He has grey-and-white hair, a beard and a heavy accent that sounds German. He is also shorter than her.

"Pardon me?"

He gestures at the poster, and she stares at him. "Did they kill somebody in your family?" he asks. "Your brother? Father? Boyfriend?"

"Who are you?" 

They're in one of the passageways at the Stark Expo. There are recruitment posters, along with posters for flying cars, suits made out of spider silk, cities with moving sidewalks. Bucky picked her up even though they could have ridden the subway in, and they walked around for half an hour, forty-five minutes, just the two of them. It was a strange feeling. Bucky is off with some girls now, that he knows from a bar where he goes sometime and the girls wanted to watch an exhibition, and Bucky wanted to dance, and Stephanie --

"I saw you a month ago, at the recruitment center a Tompkinsville on Staten Island," the man says. "You wore a suit. Brown jacket, terrible collar, terrible suit. I think you got them all at the same time, or maybe borrowed it from someone who got them all at the same time. I saw you again, on 42nd Street, and I know you went to two other recruitment centers and were in Paramus this morning, up and down outside on the sidewalk, wondering if you should go in. Up and down. Go into the diner across the street, have some coffee, then come back. Up and down. I have photographs. They're in the file." 

Stephanie blinks, breathing out slowly.

"How do you know all of this?"

"I saw you on Staten Island. The asthma alone would have disqualified you -- if you'd been a man. I saw you again in Manhattan. And I know you went to Paramus this morning. So I'm asking you, did they kill somebody you loved?" 

"No. I still don't know who you are."

"You still haven't answered my first question. Do you want to kill Nazis?"

"Is this a test?"

A couple pass behind them, talking about Howard Stark and the plant he is opening up in the Brooklyn Piers where they'll assemble ordinance. Lots of jobs. 

The little man doesn't take his eyes away from Stephanie's face. "Yes," he says, and the reply follows quickly and naturally from that. Somewhere, far away, a band is playing. 

"I don't want to kill anyone," Stephanie says. "I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from." 

...

She looks small even in the room, in the blue and white dress, the old-fashioned gray hat with two black feathers. She has a small pearl necklace on, but no earrings, and she looks back at him. 

"Is there anyone you need to say goodbye to?" Erskine says.

She shakes her head.

"A chance," Erskine says. "That's all I can give you."

...

To be clear: a skinny child from Brooklyn loses her father from mustard gas. Her mother was a nurse in a TB ward until she caught it, too. Tuberculosis is a slow death for those who are strong and have motivation to live, and Stephanie's mother has a daughter to live for. She lives until three weeks after Stephanie turns seventeen, and Stephanie stands by while the minister talks about _life everlasting_ and _hope_. Bucky is there. So is a woman who was on the bus. She got on to visit the grave of her sister, dead a few years, to bring her some flowers on her birthday. For forty five minutes, the three of them are the only people on the bus; twenty minutes in, the woman starts weeping in her seat, quietly. Stephanie looks at Bucky, then looks back at the woman. Stephanie goes over, sits by her. They talk about baseball. Movies. Film stars, the President. The way the war is going. The woman's sister, and she stops crying. 

They stop at the graveyard. Stephanie says goodbye, gets off the bus.

"Who are you here for?" the woman asks Bucky, who is still in the aisle and standing a little behind her.

"Her mother," Bucky answers. They look out of the window, and Stephanie is standing in the strong afternoon sunlight, wearing her brown dress and squinting, trying to find the undertaker. Leaves blow past her feet. 

Is it a different story if the woman looks out the window and sees a boy standing there? 

What does it have to do with the person underneath? 

After the woman puts flowers on the grave of her sister, she goes and stands with Stephanie and Bucky while they bury Stephanie's mother. Erskine tells Stephanie that he can't promise her anything. He can only give her a chance.

...

Can Stephanie really pass as a man? 

Never underestimate the power of assumption and context. The training is only a little more than week, and the questions asked by the other men, without even knowing it, are only the following:: is Rogers part of an Army training unit? Does anyone treat Rogers like a girl? Does she act like a girl, or look like one? Is her hair cut like a girl's, or does she wear girl clothes? She wears the same clothes as the men do. She has a thin, narrow body with no chest or hips to speak of, and she is in the back of the squad on runs. She keeps her head down when men talk about sex with girls, has a bed in the corner, goes to bathroom only in the dark. Behind the scenes, Erskine does convince Phillips to install stalls in the showers, and if anybody has a suspicion, any has a sneaking idea --

Hodges talks about all the broads he has slept with. Hodges is the most popular man in the squad, even after or maybe perhaps because Agent Carter belts him one in the jaw.

Hodges kicks barbed wire down on Rogers. Rogers needs no help to tumble backwards on the net crawl and fall almost back to the bottom.

Rogers figures out how to get the flag down. 

Rogers pitches herself on the grenade that Phillips throws into the middle of the squad, six inches away from Hodges's feet. Stephanie shouts for everyone to get away. 

...

Does it really matter if Rogers goes into the chamber with a girl's name and comes out with a body that looks like it belongs to a man? Erskine explains to her the night before that his work has to do with taking what is inside and making it bigger, visible. It amplifies what is already there. It gives reality to the deepest tendencies and desires. What happened to Schmidt made that clear to Erskine long before he came to America and made the two purified, advanced courses. 

"That is why we chose you. A strong man, who has known power all his life, they lose respect for that power. The weak man knows and knows compassion. And a woman, a woman who has lived your life -- "

Erskine trails off. 

"And Hodges?" 

The question hangs in the air. Stephanie looks young, but is that judgment on that calm face? 

Erskine shrugs. "Colonel Phillips. He thinks you're too skinny. And he knows you're a woman." 

Stephanie reflects on that. There is a gleam in Erskine's eye as he takes both glasses of schnapps and downs them both. 

Does Erskine expect or intend her to come out of the chamber looking like a man? Probably not. Does he have an idea, stronger than a suspicion, that it might happen? Yes. 

...

The woman stands with Bucky and Stephanie at the grave. Stephanie stands, shoulders hunched with misery but not quite able to cry, not quite able to hold Bucky's hand or lean against him, but after a moment, the woman puts her arm around Stephanie's shoulders.

The minister talks about _transformation_. He talks about _life eternal and everlasting_.

 _The life waiting for us beyond this life_. 

...

"Whatever happens tomorrow," Erskine says to her. "Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me that you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a -- " 

Stephanie looks him, thinks about it. Nods. 

...

Steve Rogers wakes up almost seventy years later. He remembers the Dodgers game that was May 25, 1941. Dodgers versus Phillies. He remembers going to the game with Bucky; he remembers wearing a dress to that game and sitting in the second deck behind third base. Blue and white print dress, hat. Gloves, shoes that pinched his feet, empty soda pop by his feet, Bucky almost catching a pop fly. Steve hangs onto his hat with his right hand and cheers with his voice for Reiser bringing in three runs to put the Dodgers on top in the bottom of the 6th. 

The eyes don't feel any different. The fingers don't feel any different, but Bucky looks at her for a moment after failing to catch the pop fly. It went three rows behind them, so no chance. Bucky is still standing, and looks over to see if she is disappointed. She is wearing a cheap dress and cheap hat and cheap gloves; he brought her to the game as a make-up for two weekends ago when he had a date he didn't want to cancel, a really gorgeous girl. It hurt, but it doesn't matter. The weather is good; the Dodgers are up by two, and Steve remembers Bucky standing there for a moment after the ball had been caught and everybody else sat down. He was standing; she smiled back at him, he stayed standing and was still looking at her, and for a moment -- 

The crowd roared and came to their feet to dispute balls-and-strikes, and the moment disappeared. 

The heart doesn't feel any different. The memory doesn't feel any different. What does Stephanie know about identity politics? She knows that she loves Bucky, believes that might doesn't make right. 

...

When Stephanie was seventeen and Bucky was nineteen --

When Bucky was eleven and Stephanie was nine --

...

"Remember when I made you ride the cyclone at Coney Island?" 

"Yeah, and I threw up."

"This isn't payback, is it?" 

They are standing on the edge of a mountain in winter, waiting for the Hydra train to pass underneath. A zipline runs over their shoulders. Steve looks at Bucky for a moment, and Bucky looks back at Steve. 

The heart doesn't feel any differ --

...

When Stephanie is seventeen and Bucky is nineteen, Stephanie's mother finally dies of tuberculosis after fighting it for years. 

When Stephanie is nine and Bucky is eleven, Bucky's father came home drunk in the middle of the day and almost beat Bucky to death.

...

The Hydra agent kills Doctor Erskine and destroys the entire rack of serum meant for Hodges. He steals one tube, which breaks on the ground. The scientists try to siphon it up from the concrete, but it has oxidized by exposure to air, become contaminated with the concrete and dirt and everything else. Stephanie loses the most powerful advocate that she has, and what are they going to do with her now? She is a woman who looks like a man. What does she think of herself as? She knew what was happening in the chamber, but shouted out for them to continue because she could take it.

There are a lot of words to describe what Stephanie becomes, but to the Senator, to the Strategic Scientific Reserve, "combat material" isn't what comes to mind. 

Hodges hadn't known, for sure, that the other test subject was a woman until he saw Steve come out in the tank top with the WAAC skirt. Awkward, not quite steady. Stephanie is clumsy in heels. 

Since there isn't serum for him, Hodges gets sent back to the front. Stephanie gets dispatched to on a war bond tour. 

...

"I asked for an army," Phillips turns around and says. "And all I got was you."

Is it necessary for Phillips to say the line about how Stephanie is not enough? Or specify why, exactly, she is not enough?

...

The Senator looks at her, and there is silence for a while. Phillips is yelling at people about how he wants to be in the air _yesterday_. Mechanics run around and past. Agent Carter is gone, following in Phillips's wake.

Does it show on the face?

"We spent a lot of money on you, miss," the Senator says, finally, not unkindly, as though she still looks the girl that she feels herself to be. "I pulled a lot of strings. You have a chance to make it up to everyone."

...

"Remember when I made you ride the cyclone at Coney Island?" 

"Yeah, and I threw up."

"This isn't payback, is it?" 

...

The first time she borrowed Bucky's old suit, he called her Steve, as a joke.

"How do you like it, Steve?" They're standing in front of a mirror. Stephanie is as tall as he been at at sixteen, but even skinnier. Her hair is pinned up, but later that day, she cuts it off and gets Bucky to trim any pieces that stick up. 

...

The shield is made out of tin-plated steel and was spray-painted behind the stage in Indianapolis. 

"You sell a few bonds. Bonds buy bullets. Bullets kill Nazis." The stage manager is from the Senator's office, but doesn't appear to know. 

Notes are taped inside the front of the shield. Steve reads them. 

Girls dance in two lines, wearing silver heels and dark stockings. Steve punches an Adolf impersonator with a glued-on mustache.

"You sell bonds. Bonds buy bullets. Bullets kill Nazis." This time, it's in Milwaukee. The stage manager definitely doesn't know.

"Play ball with us," the Senator's aide says in Indianapolis. "You'll have your platoon in no time."

One of the showgirls winks at Steve in Buffalo. Another asks if he has a sweetheart. 

In Chicago, Steve packs a three-tier theater, three shows in a row; in between, he goes directly back to his dressing room and closes the door and strips off the uniform and pulls off the hood and sits on a trunk and looks and looks and looks at himself in the mirror. 

Reflexively, she smoothes down the front of the shirt, pulls the pants up a little. 

...

What does Steve remember about life outside of a traveling, war bond selling, stage show where she has muscles bigger than any man in the audience? Brooklyn. Trolleys, taxis, the sound of traffic. The bridge in the distance, the smell of the piers closer in, and closer in still, the smell of cooking and car exhaust, the nearness of the neighbors. Living on the road with fifty-five dancing girls, twelve members of the United States Army Band, four stage and specialist technical crew, and the Senator's office people -- the closeness of being on the road with so many people reminds Steve of every apartment building she has ever lived in. The walls in dressing rooms are thin; in fact, Steve is the only one with a dressing room to herself. She also has a room to himself in hotels, and she takes to sitting by the walls at night and listens to radios play in the next room or to people passing outside on the street. The stage manager knocks on the doors, asks what Steve would like for dinner. 

Coffee. Sandwiches. The taste of sandwiches that he brings are real enough. The size of the hands she uses to hold the bread are real enough; they make the mug look small, fragile. At first, she is a little surprised by the quantity of food that they bring her, and she feels bad about it, but then she realizes that is how much people expect her to eat it now, and at the end of the day, she is, in fact, hungry enough to eat it all. Other people know her body better than she does.

What does she know about being a man?

One night, a delegation knocks on his door. It's a wet night, but Steve has the window open for fresh air. She is in the hotel room and has her sketchbook in his lap. 

"I'm tired," she says. 

"Come on, Steve. Put down your sketchbook, and come with us. Just for a drink or two," the brunette says, sliding her hand into his and trying to pull him upright. She smells like cold cream; Steve looks up into her face and sees that she took off her stage makeup and put on normal, street makeup. She knows Steve is looking at her and smiles, dimpling. 

Steve starts to back away, pull her hand out of the girl's, but the other brunette is a little more perceptive than her friend. She puts her hand on Steve's shoulder.

"The guys from the band are coming, too. It's a whole bunch of us."

Steve lets himself be pulled up onto her feet, but brings the sketchbook. 

...

What does Steve remember about Bucky? In vivid detail, everything about Brooklyn and then some. The baseball game in May and Reiser bringing three runs across the plate. The tree in the front yard of the apartment building, leafing out in pale, shining green, with Steve sitting on the floor and helping Bucky with his math. The first time, too, someone referred to her as Bucky's kid sister because they honestly didn't know she wasn't. The first time she borrowed some of Bucky's old clothes and put her hair up in a hat and went out as a boy -- Bucky's dad was no good, so his mom worked all the time, and who would know? It started as a joke, something to match the pants, but she remembers the first time that Bucky called her Steve without hesitation, and she remembers lying on the fire escape outside Bucky's window on a hot summer night, drinking soda with the game on the radio, listening to Bucky talk about girls and the war and fighting with his mom when she was around. 

The first time Bucky said he was busy and it was because he had a date. 

The first time Bucky said he was busy and saw the look on her face, and admitted it was because he had a date. 

The first time that Bucky touched her on the arm, casually, and it felt like --

It's raining, so they take a cab back. It's late, so the brunette who put on new makeup to go out yawns and tucks up against Steve -- she isn't asleep. In fact, she isn't really even pretending to be asleep because she has a smile on her face and turns her face into Steve's shoulder and takes a deep breath of the way that Steve smells. This close, in the lights from the street signs and the other cars, Steve can see the place where her lipstick doesn't quite cover the edge of her mouth, the places where the powder has brushed away and shows the skin underneath. The girl seems beautiful, genuinely gorgeous to Steve. Her legs are pressed against Steve's and are almost as long as hers, even though Steve has a good half-foot on the girl in height. 

Steve can't take her eyes away. 

Bucky was the only friend she ever had. 

"Hello, gorgeous," the girl says, eyes still closed, but puts her hand on Steve's knee. 

Her friend on the other side, the other brunette, snorts and turns to look out the window. 

Steve pulls his arm out from under her; it hangs in the air for a moment, and then, when nobody seems to move, nobody seems to mind, when it seems to be expected -- she puts it around the girl's shoulder. 

...

Forty-five minutes later, Steve comes back and knocks on their door. There are thirty seconds of silence, then some rustling and a few sharp words, indistinct through the door, and then the door opens.

"I left my sketchbook back at the club," Steve says. "Do you remember the address, or what it was called?"

The girl leans against the hotel door frame in Chicago. She is wearing a nightie, pale blue with trim on top. It looks too nice to actually sleep in, and Steve glances roommate is inside, too, has gone into the bathroom and closed the door tightly, and the girl -- her name is Jean, Steve thinks -- puts her hands behind her. The light from the hallway light is not particularly bright, and only one bedside lamp inside the room is on. 

Jean tilts her head back and waits. It's a pose from pinup, Steve knows. 

"I remember the name of the club," she says. "I'll tell you for a kiss." 

Steve looks at her. The girl smile at Steve. Inside the bathroom, the roommate turns on the faucet, and Steve takes a deep breath and thinks about --

...

What does it matter if Steve has memories of being a girl?

Does it mean she doesn't want to kiss --

...

What memories does Stephanie have of liking being a girl? 

...

On the first day of vetting, Peggy punches Hodges so hard he falls to the ground.

...

On the fourth day of vetting, Steve takes the pins out of the flagpole -- is too out of breath from the running to answer the drill sergeant, barely manages to put the flag into the sergeant's hand, then herself up into the jeep behind the driver and Agent Carter. 

...

Steve looks at her. The girl smiles at Steve. Inside the bathroom, the roommate turns on the faucet, and Steve takes a deep breath and thinks about --

What memories does Stephanie have of being a girl? The ones with her mother end at the age of thirteen, and everything after that is tied up with Bucky. Bucky and the way he looked outlined in the alley that, tall, straight in the shoulders and so proud of his uniform and deployment papers. Bucky and his easy way with girls, Bucky and his easy way with fixing cars, Bucky listening to the Dodgers on the wireless, Bucky taking her to ballgames. Bucky at the Expo, her hand tucked into his arm and her mother's hat and pearls and all the Expo around them, the strange ache in her chest at seeing all the other couples there, and Bucky telling her not to do anything stupid, and her telling him not to win the war until she was over there. 

Bucky, and the time he slept on her couch for two and a half weeks -- his mom kicked him out; she loved him and his father, he loved her and didn't love his father, so Bucky slept on her couch with his coat drawn up over him and Stephanie's spare sheets on the cushions. The apartment smelled like him. He left his shoes by the door. He brushed his teeth in her kitchen sink, used the common bathroom down at the end of the hall. At night, they ate together at a card table, and he tried to teach her how to dance with the music hour from the radio. In the morning, Stephanie stood in the doorway of her bedroom every morning, wrapped up in a housecoat, watching him in the light from the windows before dawn. 

...

What memories does Steve have of being a girl? She was always small, thin, awkward. Brown hair, old clothes. Stubborn, unwilling to settle for less because she was small or thin or awkward or a girl. 

She remembers her mother braiding her hair at the kitchen table. She remembers being in Bucky's arms, dancing in her tiny apartment to the radio and laughing on a hot August night. She remembers Bucky semi-accidentally-on purpose getting her drunk to celebrate her first real job; she remembers telling her to put on her prettiest dress, so they could go to the Expo. She remembers watching girls on Bucky's arm, Bucky wearing his second-best suit or a nice shirt or a plain t-shirt underneath his work coverall and smiling, the girl smiling back at him, and the feeling, a mix of shame and embarrassment and envy and pure, unadulterated desire, rising up out of Stephanie's chest and almost choking her. 

For Bucky? For the girl? Both of them? 

...

Steve looks at her. The girl smile at Steve. Inside the bathroom, the roommate turns on the faucet, and Steve takes a deep breath and thinks about kissing her.

Minutes beforehand, it feels like this happens: 

"Rogers," Peggy says, pitching her voice to be heard over the engine. "I'm told you're from Brooklyn." 

Steve is still breathing hard, still fighting the asthma and the stitch and the pain in the legs. It's been about a mile since they left everyone behind, and she is still fighting to get breath into her lungs. Then, she looks up and sees, in the rearview mirror, Agent Carter's face -- really, it's the first time Steve has had a chance to look at her. It's a narrow strip. Just the eyes, the eyebrows. The upper corner of the mouth. Peggy smiles; the late afternoon sun touches her hair with gold, and a jolt goes through Steve all the way down her legs. 

Steve is a good person, a fundamentally happy person. When Steve thinks about the word _girl_ , she remembers being in the back seat of the Jeep and the sight of Peggy in the rear view mirror.

When she is in Europe, she remembers being back in Chicago, standing in the bathroom door with the girl looking at her and waiting to be kissed. 

How much does an ugly, poor girl feel like a girl? More than an ugly, poor girl who wonders about kissing other girls.

...

On the sixth day of vetting, Phillips rolls a training grenade six inches from Hodge's feet. Rogers jumps ten feet forward to curl herself around it.

...

Nine days after the start of vetting, Steve is in a car with Agent Carter. They're driving back to Brooklyn. Steve wears a Woman's Army Auxiliary uniform with her short hair. 

...

Steve looks at her. The girl smile at Steve. Inside the bathroom, the roommate turns on the faucet, and Steve takes a deep breath and thinks about whether she wants to kiss Jean. Thinks about Bucky. 

The bathroom door opens, and the roommate sticks her head out. The faucet is still running in the sink. 

"We went to the Aragon, Steve. You can take the Red Line to the Lawrence stop, or tell the cabdriver to take you to Lawrence and North Broadway." She closes the bathroom door again, and Steve looks down at Jean. 

For a long, long moment, Steve thinks about kissing her anyways.

...

Can she pass as a man? 

The night they board the ship to Europe, Stephanie sits in her dressing room after the last show and looks at herself in the mirror. They're in nice theaters now; the mirror is almost as tall as she is, and she takes off the boots and the mask and the shirt and the tights, and sits down in her underwear in front of the mirror, and for a long time, she looks at herself. Music from the dance they're having for military couples filters in through the door, and Stephanie turns around and looks at her back in the mirror. No doubt it's a man's back; no doubt these are a man's hands. Her face is a man's face, and when she talks, Stephanie has gotten over being startled at the way her voice sounds, even inside her own head. 

Afterwards, Steve gets dressed in regular clothes and puts her dog tags on underneath, then folds and puts away the stage uniform, then walks back to the hotel and goes to bed, alone.

She dreams about the Hydra agent, dead at her feet on the pier in Brooklyn, the feeling she of flying when she jumped from car to car while chasing him. 

Also, Bucky. 

...

"You're more than this," Agent Carter says in a tent outside a forest in Italy. 

On the stage in Italy, the men shout for the girls to come back on the stage. 

...

" -- still don't know how to dance," Steve says.

...

What tools does Stephanie have to talk about how she feels? She isn't even sure what she is, what she can or should call herself. After her mother died, who treated her like a girl but Bucky, who was never going to want her anyways? Hasn't Stephanie always wanted to kiss girls? She has multiple memories of seeing Bucky with his hand around a girl's waist, Bucky with his lips against a girl's neck, and she knows, if she closes her eyes, that her mouth comes up with the image of touching her lips to skin, rather than of being the one being kissed. The smell of powder, the smell of scent, a single pearl earring and hearing the girl make a noise, like she imagined the girl made for Bucky. Stephanie had gone out for drinks with some of the other girls at the ad agency, and Bucky met them at the bar and established himself comfortably in the middle, wearing his second-best suit, girls on each side and was kissing one of the telephone operators afterwards, in the shadows outside the bar. 

What does Stephanie even have to tie the sense of being a girl to, except for wanting boys and being pretty when young, and being a mother and having a family when older? Stephanie's childhood memories don't exactly involve teacups and dolls. Her mother is dead. Her country could use her, so being a girl shouldn't be something that Stephanie should mind giving up, should it? She thinks about it the night before they go to Europe, standing in front of the mirror and looking at her new body and hearing couples dance together outside. It's war. Everyone makes sacrifices. What was the likelihood she was ever going to marry and have a family? Would she ever want a man besides Bu -- 

There are very few good parts to being a girl for Stephanie Rogers. She doesn't join the Army because she wants to be a man, but if they're going to make her one -- 

It's war. Everyone makes sacrifices. Does it mean that she's any different on the inside? 

There is an enormous gap between Peggy and Stephanie because even without the smooth hair, the elegant makeup, the tailored clothes, Peggy is beautiful. Still, Peggy and Stephanie don't need to have a conversation about every door being shut in their faces. Even though Stephanie is screaming inside the chamber, high and terrified, shaking with agony, Peggy doesn't come down into the experiment room and shout for the process to be stopped. 

...

"You can keep on calling me Rogers, like it says on the folder," she says.

"Do you want me to?" Peggy says, looking at her. 

Stephanie looks over at Peggy. She doesn't ask why a beautiful woman would want to join the army or volunteer for the intelligence services. She doesn't talk about waiting for the right partner; she doesn't talk about dancing. They understand each other, quite clearly, and Peggy holds the look for a long, long moment. She almost reaches a hand out to touch Stephanie, but Stephanie turns to look out the window because her cheeks are bright red. Suddenly, she is almost shaking. Suddenly, she is almost afraid of what she has committed herself to. 

Erskine has a vague idea that the Super Soldier Serum might make Stephanie turn into a man. He has mentioned it to Stephanie in passing, and Peggy -- 

Peggy reaches over, and while Stephanie is still staring fixedly out the window at this borough she has lived in her whole life, Peggy reaches over and takes Stephanie's hand. She presses her hand over Stephanie's; Stephanie presses her hand back. It's quick, and then they pull back to their opposite sides of the car. Stephanie keeps her eyes fixed on the streets, the people, the other traffic. She blinks back tears. Peggy watches Stephanie. 

Inside the chamber, Stephanie shouts out for them to go on; she can take it. Peggy doesn't intervene. 

...

" -- thirty miles behind the lines, through some of the most heavily fortified territory in Europe. We'd lost more than we'd save. But I don't expect you to understand that because you are a --"

Steve looks back. Agent Carter is behind her right shoulder. Colonel Phillips is in front of her. Rain pours down around the sides of the tent. 

"Because you're a chorus girl," is what Phillips says, and even though Steve has a very clear idea that it is coming, Steve can't quite manage to say anything in reply. Peggy feels her expression tighten, knows that she squares her jaw and stands a little more stiffly.

Phillips comes out from behind the desk, and after a moment, Steve says, quietly, "I understand." 

Rain falls outside. Peggy leans forward and puts her arm on Steve's elbow, and there is another long moment. 

"You can understand it somewhere else," Phillips says. His voice sounds like it comes from the back of the tent. "From what the posters say, you're supposed to be somewhere else in thirty minutes."

Peggy's hand is still on Steve's elbow.

"Yes, sir," Steve says. 

Peggy takes her hand off Steve's elbow. They never had a conversation in the car about every door being shut in their face because it wasn't necessary; they never have a conversation where Steve throws Peggy's words back at her about being _meant for something more than this_. 

Peggy looks back at her.

Howard flies both of them out. 

...

"Who is that?"

"It's me. It's Stev -- Stephanie." 

"You're that guy from the newsreels."

"I thought you were dead."

"We've never met before." 

Later, skittering along the hallway, and a slow realization. 

"Did it hurt?"

"A little."

"Is it permanent?"

"So far."

"Why did you do it?"

"Why do you think?"

"What do they call you?"

"What do you think?"

Steve guides them around a corner; Bucky has to lean hard against her to keep his balance because his legs won't take the strain, and once he has his breath back, he asks, "How does it feel?"

Steve doesn't answer, but after getting hit a few times by Schmidt, the moment comes with the factory floor in flames. Bucky makes it across on a shaky beam, and still has to jump for the railing. He pulls himself over and turns to look. 

...

What does Bucky remember about the world outside the torture chamber? 

Not much. Pain made his perception of time dilate, and the interior of the weapons plant had no natural light, so how many weeks? How many months had he spent? When he gets back to the camp and talks to people, he realizes that only two weeks passed since since they were captured by Hydra. Six days, maybe seven, since they took him into the isolation chamber. In the hallway, sliding and slipping, it feels as though his legs have entirely gone, as though the muscles are new and do not know what it means to be used. 

"Some of these men need medical attention," Steve says to the Colonel, meeting him eye-to-eye. Steve tries to surrender himself for discipline, and --

Bucky has a hazy memory of collapsing and being helped to the medical tent.

...

Steve comes to the medical building -- an actual building, not just a tent pitched in the mud. There is a chair already by Bucky's bed, because he was popular with his men, a couple chocolate bars saved from rations. The man that Bucky had been trying to save from a beating died in the camp, but other men in that cell survived. The man's brother, who was also in the 107th, came by to thank Bucky.

Steve sits down on the chair. It creaks. There isn't anyone else around. 

A full minute goes by. Bucky looks at his arms stretched in front of him. Now that they're out of the sleeves, they can both see the extent of the bruising. The restraints caused solid bands of purple.

"Who knows?" Bucky asks. 

"Colonel Phillips. Agent Carter. Senator Brandt and some other people like that." Steve looks him in the face. "You."

"Did it hurt?"

"Yeah."

"A lot?"

Steve swallows. "Did it hurt when you were in the isolation ward?"

Bucky looks down the tent, and he watches a group of soldiers -- other guys in the 107th, coming to see a friend they thought was dead. They crowd around his bed. The guy in the bed makes a joke, and friend closest to him throws an arm over his shoulder. They lean against each other, and a third friend smuggles a little liquor out from under his jacket. 

"I walked all the way back to camp," Bucky says, by way of reminder. "Thirty-five miles."

"You refused to ride in the truck, and you dropped into the mud once we got back to camp, and you've been in here ever since. Howard says that you have some unusual burn marks." 

"Howard?" 

Bucky looks at Steve, and Steve shrugs.

Steve says, "Howard Stark. He makes weapons -- dark hair, mustache." Steve pauses, then adds. "You were reciting your serial number and rank when I came in, and I know that Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips were in here for two hours, talking to you." 

Bucky doesn't answer.

"When we were in the factory, I told you to go," Steve says.

...

"Is it permanent?"

"So far."

"Why did you do it?"

"Why do you think?"

Bucky remembers Stephanie and does not have any illusions about her having done it for romantic lo --

...

What does Bucky remember about the world outside the torture chamber? All the things that Steve remembers, and more, because the world offers more to good looking men than plain. awkward women with the same amount of money, namely, none. The feeling of walking down the street on a Friday night with pay in his pocket and girls smiling at him. The feeling of driving fast. The pleasure of being liked and admired. The burn of alcohol on his throat and the feel of a woman's bare leg under his hand.

What does Bucky remember about Stephanie? The ballgames, the nights lying on the fire escape. Mrs. Rogers, tired from the hospital but sitting at the kitchen table and smoking and watching Stephanie and Bucky eat dinner that she had made. The first time that Bucky saved Stephanie from getting hit for arguing about the things that girls should be allowed to do, for standing up for someone who really didn't want a skinny, scrawny _girl_ who wasn't even _pretty_ trying to defend them, and she wasn't sorry, wouldn't admit she was wrong even afterwards. What could he do about the words? Not much. Stephanie would have to learn about that on her own, if that's what she wanted. 

The first time they figured they could manage a paper route together if Stephanie stuffed her hair into a cap, the time that Stephanie got her first regular job, doing artwork for an ad agency for eighteen bucks a week. The time that Bucky's father came back drunk, shoved his way into the apartment when Bucky's mother was pulling a shift at the plant and rifled through all the drawers looking for something to sell until Bucky flew at him. His father picked Bucky up by the shirt and threw him into the wall and started beating him, with Bucky screaming through the blood and pain that he was going to get a gun and kill him. 

Bucky was eleven; Stephanie was nine. Stephanie ran to get the building super and Mr. Collins from 3C, and together, they pulled Bucky's father off him.

The first time he ditched her to take a pretty girl out. The first time he took her to a ballgame to make up for it, and the first time he realized, looking at her, two things. First, she was in love with him. Second, she was never going to be beautiful or pretty enough for him to want her. 

Then again, with Steve sitting by the bed and trying to talk to Bucky, the light in Steve's hair and the shirt across Steve's shoulders tight from muscles, Bucky thinks: does it count as being in love when someone is the only family that you have? Does it count as wanting if you just want to touch them to see if they're real? 

...

"I'm the same person," Steve says. "It's just the outside that changed." 

...

"I don't want to kill anyone," Steve says. "I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from." 

...

"When we were in the factory, I told you to go," Steve says.

"That's right. I didn't go," Bucky says. They're sitting next to each other in the pub. The other men are at a table in the other room. Steve came over to point out that Bucky wasn't sitting with them; Bucky refrained from pointing out that he was the only one who knew Steve back when her mom used to braid her hair at the kitchen table. Wireless on, Bucky hiding from his parents fighting in the apartment below, watching Stephanie's mother put the clip in and kiss Stephanie on the cheek. 

"I wasn't sure if you heard me at first."

"I heard you." 

"You didn't say anything back." Steve pauses. "If you want to be in the unit, you have to follow orders." 

Steve thinks of adding something else -- probably about understanding why Bucky might want a break, want a rest, so before Steve figures out whether he should say it, Bucky adds. "I mean, you saw the injection marks. I wasn't even sure that you were real." 

Beer mug in hand, Bucky looks over at Steve to see whether Steve concedes the point. It isn't every day your upstairs neighbor and adopted kid sister shows up at your bedside, transformed into a six-foot two, blond, muscles, a hero at the beginning of his story. Reflexes, incredible strength, the ability to jump twenty feet with a small running start, the ability to lead a one-man assault against a heavily-armored military plant where the security guards have energy guns, and lead four hundred men back out. The comic book stories don't begin to describe it 

Steve's expression doesn't change.

So Bucky asks, "Did you enlist at the Expo?"

"Yes." 

"I thought I told you not to do anything stupid."

"They didn't put the serum in me until after that." 

"Are you really the same inside?" 

Agent Carter walks into the pub wearing red satin.

...

Bucky knows that if he had kissed Stephanie, back when she was Stephanie and back when they were in Brooklyn, she would have kissed him back. If he'd asked her to go to a hotel room with him, she -- she would have hesitated, but she would have said yes after only a moment. She loved him. He was everything in the world to her and more besides. That day at the ballgame, when he failed to catch the fly ball and looked at her face, he saw it written, clear as letters on a newspaper. 

Bucky looks at Steve, watching Carter walk away, and wonders whether Steve would follow him anywhere. 

"I'm the same person," Steve says. "It's just the outside that changed. You remember when you used to call me Steve as a joke, right?" 

...

"It's like I don't exist," Bucky says. After a moment, the thought occurs to him. "Does she know -- "

"She knows," Steve says, looking a little stupid in the face. "She was with me in the car on the way to the treatment. I think she doesn't mind." 

Bucky knows his mouth is hanging open.

Steve looks even stupider in the face and has to at least try to cover it by ordering a drink from the bartender.

...

Steve worries that Agent Carter and Howard Stark have a relationship. 

Bucky reads a newspaper account of the rescue and knows that his name won't appear in it. Phillips's adjutant has been drinking for weeks on the story of being in the tent when Captain America decided he was going to liberate the 107th; Bucky buys the man a beer and hears the story. By then, the man is too drunk to realize that B-a-r-n-e-s, James Buchanan is sitting in front of him. 

Bucky is not too drunk to put two and two together and figure out that Steve did not go into the encampment to find him. 

"I'm the same person," Steve says.

Falsworth tells Bucky that the Captain was kissing the cool blonde piece who sits outside Jackson's office, the one who always looks like she smells something rotten but has legs for days and days -- he was kissing her, and Agent Carter caught him doing it and just cut him dead. He slunk, Falsworth says. He positively _slunk_ to briefing. 

Morita laughs. "Couple hours later, I heard he was in the weapons lab when Cap got his new shield, the one that deflects bullets? Technician swears Carter grabbed a Luger. Just opened up on him, and he hid behind the shield until it was over."

...

What does Bucky remember about the world inside the torture chamber? 

What experience does Bucky have of being jealous of Stephanie, no matter what she goes by now?

...

"You don't have a sniper yet," Bucky says to Steve.

The relief on Steve's face makes something inside Bucky --

...

Bucky has a memory of dancing with Stephanie in her studio apartment. It was after his mother had kicked him out, and the radio was on, soft enough that it mixed with the sounds of traffic. The sun was setting behind the buildings; they would have to turn the lights on in a bit, and they had taken their shoes off because the downstairs neighbor had already complained about the noise. Bucky was in socks, and Stephanie was in bare feet to save her stockings. He was trying to convince Stephanie to let him lead, and she was a combination of wanting to follow him and follow the music on her own. 

"Listen," Bucky had said. They were facing each other, and his hand was in the small of her back. "I'm the guy. Count with me."

Stephanie looked up at him with an expression that lets him know that she is not exactly impressed.

"Which one of us has actually danced? I've been to the Stork Club, remember. Put your head on my chest," Bucky says. "I mean, don't do it on the dance floor with somebody who just asked you -- "

" -- I'm not _stupid_ , you know."

"Really? You're not? My toes say otherwise." Bucky lets go of her fingers and brings his hand up to the back of her head, pulls her head forward, so that it'll lie on his chest. "Come on. But we can do it now. Just until you get the feeling." 

She grumbles, but Bucky keeps his hand against the back of her head long enough to be sure that she'll keep it there; she cuts her hair for short for a girl, right around chin-length, unwaved, held back from her face with a plain black clip. It feels cool against Bucky's hand. 

" -- two, three, four," he says, and Stephanie doesn't follow him out loud.

"Come on," he says. "Count with me. Keep your head on my chest." 

...

"I'm the same person," Steve says. "It's just the outside that changed." 

...

" -- and then she just walks out of the room, I swear to you, she just -- "

Dugan is telling a story about a girlfriend he had once, and Steve is sitting to Dugan's left, one arm stretched back and smiling quietly, listening, but not quite believing. When Dugan gets to the punchline, Steve laughs with everyone else, and when he opens his mouth to call for another round on him, everyone around the table goes quiet for a moment, waiting to see what he'll say. The faces turn towards him. Steve flags the girl who brings the beer. 

Bucky watches from the bar in the other room, calls the bartender for another beer, watches girls smile at Steve, watches men smile at Steve, watches the table stop its conversation whenever Steve takes a movement that sounds like it might lead to Steve breathing a word. It goes beyond respect. It almost goes beyond hero worship. Bucky remembers being in the forest with Steve the week before; snow had started to dust the pine trees. The ground was hard with frost in the mornings, and they could all hear the sound of conventional German artillery on their left, first short of the Allied position, then too long. When would they get it right? And there were rumors of Hydra armor advancing on their right. Bucky saw the fear on the faces of the regular troops, even their commanding officers, and Steve called the leadership and the Howling Commandos over to the map he had spread out on the hood of a jeep. 

With all due respect, Colonel Anderson, Steve explained, their worries were not either the German artillery or the Hydra armor, which Steve was being informed was advancing on their position and were to be expected two hours before sundown. They shouldn't think of them as separate matters to be dealt with at separate times. The artillery would be firing during and in support of any attack by Hydra armor; Hydra did not care to preserve their troops or machinery if it meant victory, so it was necessary both to be prepared for both of them, and to do what was possible to eliminate one or the other. Under cover of the mist in the forest, Steve would lead a small force that would, if his intelligence from Howard Stark was accurate, be enough to subdue German artillery and remove the threat that kept the Allied forces penned in this valley. In the meantime and during as much daylight as remained, the colonel would want to considering shifting his own artillery here and here, and to move at least a hundred men to this elevation in order to --

"Jesus, have you always been like this?"

"Like what?"

It's the night afterwards. They're standing outside the tent that passes for a field hospital; Steve led the Commandos in destroying the German artillery during the afternoon, and at sunset, Steve led everyone else in turning back the Hydra armor units . There are, almost miraculously, no Howling Commandos injured enough to be in the hospital, but Steve was making a general visit to check up on the men in there. He knew their names without having to look at the charts; he shook hands of those strong enough to shake hands. He sat by the beds of those who were not, and the lightbulb hanging outside the tent throws out a dim, yellow light. Bucky studies the lines of Steve's face, looking for traces of Stephanie's. 

"Did they put you in special Captain America school? Hero school?"

Steve lifts his eyebrows at Bucky. "I've always been like this."

"Horseshit. Back in Brooklyn, you were too stupid to run from a fight." 

There is a long moment of silence, then Steve starts to laugh and rubs his hands over his eyes. 

"You should come in with me next time," he says. 

She says. 

...

Bucky remembers the moment when he identified what he was feeling: Steve had the topographic map spread over the hood of the jeep, and Bucky looked to his left and his right and saw the same look of respect and attention on every face. He looked at the face of the colonel; he looked at the face of the other captains, with equal rank and years more field time than Steve. They had been in Europe for years. How long had Steve been commanding his rough dozen men? 

It was real emotion, raw and ugly. 

Bucky never tells either Steve or Stephanie that he's following the kid in Brooklyn who was too stupid to run from a fight. If the Steve who had once been Stephanie wanted to hear it, he keeps it to himself. He --

...

"Listen, Bucky, can you come to dinner with me tonight? We've got a table for four, and I -- " 

...

\-- looking for the lines of Stephanie's face in Steve --

...

"Come on," Bucky says. "Count with me. Keep your head on my chest." 

The room is half-dark around them, and Bucky feels Stephanie take a breath.

"One, two, three four," they say, with the next measure, and Bucky feels her lips moving against his shirt front. He takes his hand away from her hair, catches her right hand in his left. 

"Back, back, side," he says, and Stephanie takes another long, shaky breath and finally closes her eyes. She holds still; Bucky holds her at the hand and the small of the back, and then she starts to move again, and they dance, Bucky counting for both of them, until the program ends. It's dark enough that they can't even really see each other's faces, the very end of twilight. More by memory than sight, Bucky makes his way to the lamp by the couch, turns it on with a movement of the fingers, and sees that Stephanie is watching him from across the room, smiling a little to herself. This was the furthest they'd been apart from each other for forty-five minutes, and it's the second anniversary of Steve's mother dying. Her father has been dead for over a dozen years. 

If Steve was once Stephanie and Bucky saves her from fewer beatings in the alley as a consequence, it doesn't mean she needed him any less.

It doesn't mean that Steve needs him --

...

"I'm the same person," Steve says.

Steve never asks whether Bucky is the same person. 

...

Two miles into the march from the Hydra factory camp, far enough for it to be clear that they aren't being pursued, Steve calls for a halt: he wants to make sure that the wounded are being cared for, that men are taking turns on the three trucks they've taken from the factory encampment, that every man has a long drink of war, and that there are clear lines of communication in case they are attacked or meet Allied forces, and that it is very clear where they are going. Bucky had been walking next to him, and he leans against a pine tree and closes his eyes. He can hear excited men talking all around.

"You all right?"

Bucky opens his eyes, and Steve is standing in front of him; he is looking at Bucky with some amount of concern. Steve had paused in the middle of giving orders to a surviving lieutenant of the 107th and a British major, and they're looking at Bucky with concern, too. 

"Did you have any water?" Steve asks.

"I'll go find some," Bucky says and staggers off. For twenty feet, at least, he can hear Steve talking, explaining what he wants, clear and precise, the calm, confident voice of someone who expects reasonable orders to be obeyed. 

...

"I have all the same memories." 

Howard takes them out one night: dinner at the Savoy, dancing later in a club to be named later, depending on what hasn't been been shut down or bombed. It's a celebration of making it back from the Hydra factory camp in more or less one piece. Steve makes arrangements for him and Bucky to go, and Bucky comes by Steve's sleeping quarters in London -- in recognition of rank and achievements and as a mark of honor, he has a room by himself. Small. Windowless, but pin neat. It's the first time they've been alone, door closed, nobody in earshot. 

Steve is sitting on the edge of the small desk he uses for work, and Bucky is helping him -- her -- whatever it is get dressed for a full night on the town. After all, the closest thing that Steve actually had to real basic training was a week of, apparently, throwing herself on grenades if the rumor is anything to be believed.

"Do you need me to help you with your tie?"

"No, I think I've worked it out," Steve says, looking into a scrap of mirror and frowning. It's a little After a moment, he turns back around with a respectable four-in-hand. 

"Pretty good," Bucky says. "Practicing?"

"Colonel Phillips saw me with one and said it was a disgrace to the honor of the United States, so he showed me how to do it." Steve buttons his cuffs, glances over at Bucky. "I guess he's coming around on me." 

"Must be," Bucky says, and Steve puts his dress jacket on, bends down to check his tie again in the mirror, then catches Bucky looking in the mirror and says, making eye contact in the mirror without turning around.

"Listen, Bucky," Steve says, surprisingly softly, almost hesitantly. "It's me. I haven't changed."

There is a long moment of silence; through the closed door, they hear someone wheel something large and heavy past in the hallway, and after it passes and Bucky still doesn't say anything, Steve turns around and takes the two steps over, so they're facing each other, close enough to reach out and put his hand on Bucky's shoulder. He doesn't, though. 

"I remember all the things that you've done for me," Steve says. "I have all the same memories."

"I know," Bucky says. "You remember the time I tried to teach you to dance?" 

"I remember. You almost tripped over the end table because it was so dark in the room," Steve smiles, and Bucky says, after that, easily enough: "It's why I'm going to be play second wingman to you and Agent Carter, isn't it?"

They meet Howard and Peggy at the elevator, and the whole ride to the surface, Bucky thinks about when Stephanie would have let him kiss her, if he'd wanted to. 

...

Steve assumes the distance is because Bucky is still trying to sort out how he feels about his best friend looking like a man. 

Steve assumes that Bucky picked up being a sniper unofficially, sometime after deploying to Europe. Is Bucky now frighteningly, staggeringly good? Does Bucky now, suddenly, effortlessly, break sharpshooting records of long standing? Steve assumes it's because Bucky is good at what he does. Bucky is smart enough to tell anybody who asks it's because Howard Stark is good at what he does.

...

There is a moment in Stephanie's apartment, where, if it were ever going to happen --

...

Bucky wakes from a nightmare of being back in the _isolation chamber_. Why would they call it an isolation chamber unless there were something in there that could spread, that could contaminate? Bucky wakes from a dream of being pinned to a table, convinced that he was back there, and then makes himself lie still and listen to the men who drew guard duty and are standing forty feet away; he hears the other men snoring in close reach, and slowly, the blinding panic leaves his body. He can move. He can breathe. 

He listens to Steve breathing, slow and steady and righteous, three feet away. Steve is loyal, and he sleeps with them in his field. Bucky is his best friend. They know each other from Brooklyn, and Bucky used to save him from getting his ass kicked in alleys. Bucky can see, on their faces, two things: first, slight disbelief that Cap would ever need saving from getting his ass kicked. Second, nevertheless, them improving their assessment of him. 

How long will that lost? Does it last even if --

Bucky closes his eyes and tries to put a lid on his terror. 

On a locate-and-destroy sixty miles inside German lines, Steve flicks open his compass to take a bearing. Peggy's face is on the inside cover, taped so that the needle will always point to her for _north_. 

...

Peggy and Bucky ride the elevator down to the War Rooms together.

Bucky says, "Steve tells me he met you in camp, after Doctor Erskine showed up at his medical exam."

Peggy looks over at Bucky. "Yes, I handled most of the psychological assessment work. Steve says he met you when -- back in Brooklyn." 

Bucky turns his head, takes in the red mouth, the smooth hair, the beautifully tailored uniform, the tidy heels.

...

"I'm the same person," Steve says. "It's just the outside that changed." 

Bucky is pretty sure at that is in no way actually tr --

...

"Did the two of you have something?"

Howard looks over at Bucky; they're sitting at the best table in the house, watching Peggy take Steve around to introduce him to a few other tables. Generals. Members of Parliament, Cabinet secretaries, the right-hand man of the most powerful newspaper man in London. All important people, people who can help Steve keep the Howling Commandos and go on the kinds of missions that he thinks they need to be taking. Peggy and Steve are currently at a table of people roughly as tall and blond as Steve and one older man whose hair is mostly dark and has impressive moustaches. 

"Who?" Howard had been watching goodlooking brunette who is out dancing on the floor, giggling in a low-cut dress that gives every promise, at any moment, of being unable to contain her giggling and good looks. 

"You and Peggy."

They both look over at Peggy introducing Steve to the Norweigan king in exile with his court, and Howard picks up his glass of champagne and shakes it to knock the last bubbles off the bottom. Steve shakes hands with a king and gets clapped on the back by him; he looks over at Peggy, smiling, and she puts her hand on the small of Steve's back. 

"Yes, but it's over now," Howard says, has some champagne, and goes back to watching the brunette and her outclassed dance partner. 

...

Bucky goes on a mission with Steve and the rest of the unit in the west of France. A Hydra research facility, and Bucky spends six hours lying still with leaves scattered over his back. He breathes slowly, steadily; through his scope, he watches the guards at the front. He studies the way they move, the way they hold their guns, the contraptions fitted over their heads. He decides to use the high-powered bullets that Howard has developed and wants Bucky to test out, and after making that decision, Bucky pulls a little soft bread out of his bag and eats it, slowly, making it last.

Four hours in, two hours from sundown, Steve comes with a pair of binoculars to see if anything has changed from the intelligence. 

"How are you doing?" Steve says, lying down next to Bucky. They're on a ridge, behind a stand of trees. 

"That jacket doesn't fit you." Bucky replies. Steve has Jones's jacket draped over him to hide the blue of the carbon fiber, and Steve laughs a little, but doesn't take his eyes from the guards. 

"I'll let the tailor know." 

There isn't a lot of room in the hollow, and Steve lies elbow-to-elbow, hip-to-hip with Bucky. 

Does it count if --

...

Does it count if what you miss is being needed? Does it count if what you miss is being the most important person in someone's life?

Does it count if what you're terrified of is being found out? 

...

They walk back to his room after the dinner and dancing: Howard took Peggy out for a spin on the floor, but decides to stay with the giggling girl from the dance floor, and Steve offers Peggy his arm, and they go through the streets because the night is dark and cold and wet. 

...

"I'm the same person," Steve says. "It's just the outside that changed." 

Bucky is pretty sure this is in not true for either of them. 

...

Bucky remembers --

...

Bucky remembers --

...

Bucky remembers --

They wade into the research facility; on a signal, Bucky kills every guard at the entrance, and Steve leads a group that crashes a cargo truck through the gate. Afterwards, Bucky joins a unit composed of Morita and Falsworth, securing the perimeter while the explosive guys rig the main generator. 

Bucky finds a man hiding in a closet -- not a guard, not a soldier. A scientist, by the look of him. He starts to talk in German, then switches to English when he realizes Bucky doesn't appear to understand.

" -- you shouldn't be here. You can't be here. I know you from Lienz, I tried to get them to stop, when they were programming yo-- "

Without thinking, Bucky swings his rifle up against the man's head; the man has a second of horror before the high-powered rifle out of Howard's lab shoots a bullet that buries itself deep into the wall behind where the man's skull used to be.

Bucky comes back into the corridor. "What was in there?" Morita says. There is blood spray down the entirety of Bucky's torso. 

"Some bodies," Bucky says, and fifteen minutes later, he is back in a room with Steve, waiting for pickup.

Bucky remembers more of the torture chamber than he will admit to anyone. He is not proud of having lied to the Colonel and the Army intelligence, but what would they have done if he had told them? 

...

Bucky wakes from a nightmare of being back in the _isolation chambers_ The nightmare feels as real as anything on Earth, and on waking, Bucky lies awake, listening to men snoring, to Steve breathing. Steve is loyal, and he sleeps with them in his field. Bucky is his best friend. They know each other from Brooklyn, and Bucky used to save him from getting his ass kicked in alleys. Bucky can see, on their faces, two things: first, slight disbelief that Cap would ever need saving from getting his ass kicked. Second, nevertheless, them improving their assessment of him. How long will that last? How long can Steve prot --

...

"Are you all right?" Steve says, in the ride in the ride back from the Hydra research facility. Steve, being Steve, has taken the shitty seat next to the opening at the back, where cold wind and rain blow through. Bucky sits next to Steve, and Steve leans over to yell in Bucky's ear over the sound of the engine. 

Bucky can feel Morita's eyes on him. 

...

For the rest of his life, Bucky remembers walking back from the Savoy and dancing that night, twenty feet behind Steve and Peggy, watching the shadows in the corners of the buildings and seeing the mist roll in from the river like a living thing, swallowing up trees and benches and lamp posts. Howard left with the brunette that he separated from her dance partner, and neither the ice nor the Red Room can take the visual memory from Bucky: the moon was hidden behind clouds, and trees looked like skeletons. Searchlights swept the sky. He saw Peggy point out the aerial bombardment balloons over Tower Bridge, heard Steve making Peggy laugh, saw Steve give Peggy his coat when it began to rain. 

When they came to the guarded elevator entrance to the War Rooms, the lights caught on Steve face, looking at Peggy with an expression that made Bucky's --

...

Why is Steve in love with Peggy? The more relevant question is why shouldn't he be? She is beautiful and smart; she has a smile that makes Steve catch his breath. She knows exactly what Steve is. She liked Steve when Steve was Stephanie; she would have taken Stephanie, but she doesn't mind Steve.  
...

Bucky remembers looking for the lines of Stephanie's face in Steve's. He doesn't find much at that moment, but when the lights at the guarded elevator entrance to the War Rooms catch Steve looking at Peg--

The ice takes the before and after from Bucky. It exists, in his mind, as an isolated scene. Why is he there? What came before? What came after?

The Red Room takes the labels from everything that he does remember: Steve. Peggy. London. The Savoy. After the Red Room is done, all he has left is the memory of the feeling that flooded him: one part drunkenness, one part jealousy. Two parts fear. Three parts pure, absolute loneliness. 

...

"Remember when I made you ride the cyclone at Coney Island?" 

Steve doesn't turn around, but there is a little bit of amusement in his voice.

"Yeah, and I threw up."

"This isn't payback, is it?" 

They are standing on the edge of a mountain in winter, waiting for the Hydra train to pass underneath. A zipline runs over their shoulders. Steve looks at Bucky, and Bucky looks back at Steve, then closes his eyes and opens them again before he can go back to the chamber with Schmidt talking to him, low and steady.

Steve is talking to the radio guys; Bucky's throat hurts. 

The heart does feel different, but Bucky doesn't think it's love or family or any kind of wanting that he will acknowledge. 

Bucky goes onto the zipline second behind Steve. 

...

Bucky remembers being interrogated, after his return, by Army intelligence. There were two men, neatly, anonymously dressed. One man asked questions; the other took notes.

"Do you know if they used injections?"

"I don't remember."

"The medical report indicates there is scabbing consistent with multiple repeated injection sites." 

"Does it? I don't remember." 

"Do you know if they used electroshock?"

"I don't remember." 

...

Steve remembers hearing the wolf-whistles when the girls trotted onto the stage, and Peggy came by afterwards, when it was just Steve sitting behind stage, scratching in a notebook. Rain had been pouring down every side of the tarp that covered the stage and backstage. 

"Bond sales take a 10% jump in every state I visit." 

"Is that Senator Brandt I hear?" 

"At least he'll let me do this. Phillips would have me locked up in a lab." 

Peggy thinks about asking whether those are Steve's only two options, but she studies the face outlined against the sky and doesn't. What choices are there for women in 1943? Even women who, thanks to science, look nothing like men?

"I always wanted to be strong enough to fight and protect people," Steve says, softly. "I thought it would be worth -- anything, to have a chance to do everything I could. I finally got a chance at it, and now, I'm in tights." 

An ambulance pulls up. Peggy read the personnel file on Stephanie; Peggy saw the transcripts of the neighbors interviewed, the hospital records. Mr. Collins from 3C moved away, but the building supervisor remembered being in his apartment, arguing with Collins about whose responsibility it was to fix the plumbing, and the skinny girl who came in and screamed and banged on the door until they went to stop her best friend's father from beating him to death. The building supervisor remembers dragging the man out of the apartment, still fighting, the boy still shouting through his mess of a face that he was going to kill his father and trying to stand, and the girl throwing her arms around boy, holding him and crying and getting his blood smeared over her face, too. 

"If she hadn't gotten us," the building supervisor said. "I think he would have beaten Bucky to death." 

When the ambulance starts to unload, Peggy does not watch the stretcher or the orderlies. She never had to tell Steve about every door being shut in her face, and after a moment, Peggy tells Steve about the 107th at Mezzano. 

"Because you're a chorus girl," Phillips says to Steve.

Howard Stark jumps at the chance to take his new prototype out for a spin and for Peggy to owe him a favor. Steve comes back with Bucky and three hundred ninety four other men. 

Bucky asks himself, afterwards, whether Steve would have done it if Bucky had definitely been dead. The answer, Bucky decides, is _certainly_.

...

Bucky asks Morita what he knows about Agent Peggy Carter. 

"Aside from the fact that she's the Captain's girl?" Morita says. He hasn't quite been friendly to since hearing shots, seeing Bucky come out covered in blood, catching the Captain's best friend in a obvious, blatant lie.

Bucky knows Morita doesn't trust him, knows that Falsworth has recently developed a tendency to go quiet and reserved when Bucky comes into a room and Steve is not there.  
...

"Do you know if they asked you any questions?"

"I don't remember."

"Can you explain how you were able to walk thirty-five miles after being tortured for two weeks?"

"I used my feet." 

The Howling Commandos aren't the only people that Bucky worries about. 

...

"Remember when I made you ride the cyclone at Coney Island?"

"Yeah, and I threw up."

They took the subway out to the New West End Terminal and spent the day wandering up and down Surf Avenue. Bucky ate the lion's share of hot dogs; Stephanie played the lion's share of the boardwalk games. On the train, the compartment doors are centrally controlled. Neither Bucky nor Steve realize that, and they slam shut, and for the first time, in a long time, Steve is afraid. 

...

"Doctor Erskine said that serum wouldn't just affect my muscles, it would affect my cells and create a protective system of regeneration. Apparently, that means I can't get drunk. Did you know that?"

Broken glass crunches under Peggy's feet. There are no lights working. 

...

Steve hits the armored Hydra fighter at the weak point in the armor, crushes his windpipe with the edge of the shield, and uses the Hydra man's arm-cannon to blow a hole through the door on his back to the window. Bucky has run out of ammunition; Bucky has his back to the wall, and the look on Bucky's face when Steve tosses him the gun -- 

Steve also remembers the exchange that followed. "I had him on the ropes," Bucky says.

"I know you did." 

...

"It wasn't your fault."

"Did you read the report?"

"Then you know that's not true." 

"You did everything you could. Did you believe in your friend? Did you respect him? Then stop blaming yourself. Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice. He damn well must have thought you were worth it."

...

On the train, the compartment doors are centrally controlled. Neither Bucky nor Steve realize that, and they slam shut, and for the first time in a long time, Steve is afraid. He sees the expression on Bucky's face before Steve gets the door open again and tosses him the gun. He gets knocked to the floor, and when he hears shots, he sees Bucky with the shield, firing and advancing on the Hydra armored unit.

Bucky is knocked out of the train car by the shot from the Hydra unit's cannon, and falls into the ravine, screaming. 

...

Stephanie becomes Steve. Agent Carter becomes Peggy. Bucky becomes --

...

"Do you know if they asked you any questions?"

"I don't remember."

"Can you explain how you were able to walk thirty-five miles after being tortured for two weeks?"

"I used my feet." 

Steve is not stupid; Steve knows that before Bucky dies, Bucky was not the most popular member of the Howling Commandos. Buck was not improving unit morale. Morita is openly unfriendly, and Steve heard Falsworth and Bucky have a cold, bitter exchange about treatment of prisoners. He knows Bucky and Dugan almost get into a fight one night; it doesn't quite come to physical gestures, but only because Steve chooses that moment to walk into the room.

After Bucky dies --

...

After Bucky dies, nobody is stupid enough to say a word to Steve about Bucky.

...

Bucky has a memory of dancing with Stephanie in her apartment. He remembers the moment when he bent down and turned the lamp on: the light was yellow, and he remembers, vividly, the moment of looking up from the lamp and over across the room and seeing her face. She was smiling at him, and she came to stand by him and ask if he was all right. Being lit from below softened her features, emphasized her smile; she was barefoot, wearing a blue and white dress, and he had been the center of her world. She extended a hand toward him --

If it had ever been about to happen, that would have been the moment, Bucky knows. 

It doesn't. Stephanie becomes Steve. Agent Carter becomes Peggy. Bucky becomes --

...

Steve thinks about Bucky teaching him to dance when the plane is heading downwards. The moment becomes suddenly, vividly real to him. Steve leans forward and uses the weight of his body on the control wheel to point the noise of the plane downwards into the ice sheet: there is a moment between doing that and speaking to Peggy again, and he thinks about the apartment, the outline of Bucky's face in the half-light, the hand at the small of his back, the hand in his hair, and his bare feet on the floor to save stockings. The smell of Bucky's body against his, the warmth, the way he had looked at him for just a moment afterwards. 

If it had ever been about to happen --

"Peggy," Steve says, knowing his voice is a little rough.

...

"This is my choice," Stephanie says to Peggy, and puts the compass with the newspaper clipping on the instrument panel. The kiss from the car burns on Stephanie's mouth; she had looked back and very specifically fixed the way that Peggy had looked in the car, hair blowing loose, mouth still painted red. Is there any of the lipstick on Stephanie's mouth now? 

Stephanie wishes she'd held hands with Peggy in the car on the way to the experiment. 

_I must have thought you were worth it._

...

In the car, on the way to the test, they don't need to talk about how Peggy has had every door shut in her face. Once there, Peggy doesn't come down into the experimental room to order Erskine to end the process, even though she can hear Stephanie screaming inside the chamber. They don't have an argument by the side of the Jeep while Steve is loading his shield and backpack into it; Peggy looks at Steve, and Steve looks back at her. Peggy puts her hand on Steve's arm, rests it there for a moment, then says she has a better way and gets Howard. 

In the car, on the way to the trial, Peggy reaches over and presses her hand to Stephanie's. 

In the car, on the way to the plane, Peggy and Stephanie kiss. 

...

The picture Peggy keeps for decades is Stephanie, standing at the Stark Expo, wearing a dress with an old-fashioned gray hat and two black feathers. She has a small pearl necklace on, but no earrings, and she holds her coat in her arms. 

...

Bucky becomes --

...

"I had a date," Steve says, standing in Times Square, and forty-two weeks into being an Avenger, fifteen years after Peggy dies and almost seventy-one years after Steve went into the ice, he has his first run-in with the Winter Soldier.

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first Captain America fic I started, and [destronomics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics/pseuds/destronomics) was there for the screaming, hysterical caps-lock meltdown when OH GOD OH GOD STEVE/BUCKY STEVE BUCKY JESUS CHRIST STEVE/BUCKY I SHIP IT FUCK ME I SHIP IT WHERE HAVE THOSE DEAD EYES BEEN ALL MY LIFE and the OH GOD WHAT OH MY GOD WINTER SOLDER WINTER SOLDIER I CAN'T OH GOD WINTER SOLDIER THIS IS CANON? OH GOD Poor [destronomics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics/pseuds/destronomics) was, as usual, the sounding board and suggester and thinker and awesome behind all of the awesome behind this. She has a way of reading shitty stuff that I write, pointing out the best part of it, and then getting me all excited to expand upon that one awesome bit. She is brilliant, and all of the silliness is my own. 
> 
> Gender issues: personally, I don't read Stephanie as being trans, and my mind, this isn't a narrative about transitioning/being transgender or otherwise a member of the trans community. Instead, in my head, the story is basically that Stephanie is not super-attached to her body as it is (because it has all these medical issues) or her identity as a girl (because society is shallow, and her mother, who was invested in Stephanie's gender identity being female, is dead). Being a girl would be fine if her body weren't so shitty and society wasn't so terrible and if her mom were still around, but as things stand at the beginning of the story, Stephanie can take it or leave it. When given the choice between (i) sitting the war out and (ii) possibly getting a body that will let her have what she wants/what she feels she needs to do for her country, she takes what's behind door number 2, with the nice side benefit of hey, her interest in girls now looks way more socially acceptable to everybody around her in 1943. 
> 
> So yeah. Erskine has that line that gets picked up in the title, and what he means is that for Stephanie, her innermost and underlying trait is her desire to do her duty and help her country. He isn't saying that she feels a male gender identity fits her better, nor do I think that if this Stephanie were presented with the vocabulary, she would say that she prefers non-gendered pronouns, or that she would necessarily identify as agender or nonbinary. 
> 
> On the other hand, I'm totally fine with people reading this story the way they want. 
> 
> Also, the part of me that remembers writing 23894 fics about the Age of Sail is just screaming about all the historical inaccuracies/anachronisms that are in here. 
> 
> In short, I apologize for everything.


End file.
